Georgia law makes credit freezes free of charge effective as of July 1

“A credit freeze can be a power­ful and pro-active weapon against identity theft,” said Attorney Gen­eral Chris Carr. “We hope this new law will encourage more Georgians to use this simple tool to protect themselves from fraud.”

When a freeze is in place, credit reporting agencies cannot release consumers’ credit reports or credit scores unless consumers first re­move the freeze by providing a PIN or password. Since lenders and creditors rely on access to consum­ers’ credit files to determine their creditworthiness, denying such ac­cess through a freeze makes it very difficult for an identity thief to open a new credit account or get a loan in a victim’s name.

There are other specialized credit reporting agencies, one of which is the National Consumer Telecom and Utilities Exchange (NCTUE), which maintains data reported by some telecommunication, pay TV and utility service providers.

If you wish to place or remove a security freeze on your NCTUE ac­count, call 1-866-349-5355 or visit www.exchangeservicecenter.com/ Freeze/jsp/SFF_ PersonalIDInfo. jsp.

A credit freeze does not affect your existing credit in any way. However, if you want to apply for a new loan or credit card, you will need to contact the credit reporting agencies to have the freeze tempo­rarily lifted or thawed. Please note that a new federal law will go into effect September 21, 2018 that will make credit freezes free nation­wide.